Thirty years after people first started dying from a then-unknown virus, we face a thrilling tipping point in AIDS history. Leading scientists say the end of the pandemic is possible, maybe even in our lifetime. Now, the question is: How do we seize this moment? Here, we spell out our suggestions for what we need to lay HIV to rest.

In September of 2010, Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), named HIV one of “six
winnable battles” the CDC will wage under his command. His claim that
AIDS can be beaten may prove prescient.

Global health leaders agree that scientific breakthroughs indicate the
end of AIDS could be in sight—possibly in the near future if we
strategically apply our resources to capitalize on recent discoveries.

What’s different now? Primarily, new data from U.S.-funded research
showing that antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) serves as prevention—in
both people living with the virus and those who are not. A recent study
known as “HPTN 052” offers evidence that treating people with HIV can
lower the risk of viral transmission by a whopping 96 percent. When we
put people with HIV on ARVs, we save their lives—and stop the spread of
HIV. Several other studies show that when people at risk for HIV take
treatment daily (a practice called “PrEP” for “pre-exposure
prophylaxis”), or when they take ARVs after potential exposure (a
practice known as “PEP” for post-exposure prophylaxis), their chance of
contracting the virus is reduced.

The long-waged battle between the treatment and prevention camps is
over—treatment is
prevention. Bill Gates, one of the most generous funders in
the fight against AIDS, has said, “We can’t treat our way out of this
epidemic.” Indeed, ultimately, the answer is having a vaccine—and a
cure. But while we develop them, it appears the tools already in our
possession can begin to end AIDS. Perhaps we can at least partially
treat our way out of AIDS after all.

Anthony Fauci, MD, head of the National Institutes of Health’s National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said recently in Science: “The fact that
treatment of HIV-infected adults is also prevention gives us the
wherewithal, even in the absence of an effective vaccine, to begin to
control and ultimately end the AIDS pandemic.”

Putting a lot more people with HIV on ARVs is the equivalent of capping
the well in a large oil spill. It doesn’t completely solve the problem,
but it’s a first—and necessary—step to doing so. Treating people who are
living with HIV stops the spread of disease, keeps the world safer and
saves billions of American dollars—these facts provide new justification
for the cost and effort required to achieve our goals of universal
access to care for all who need it. The United Nations’ new goal for
universal access is 15 million people by 2015. Currently, only 6 million
of the 33.3 million people estimated to be living with HIV globally are
on ARVs. Having so few on pills is like trying to clean up an oil spill
while the well is still a geyser.

Once, the notion of universal access smacked of giving endless,
expensive medications to an eternally growing pool of people who
couldn’t afford them themselves and relied on the largesse of
governments and pharmaceutical companies to save them. New data suggest
that doing the right things today could enable us to get the upper hand
on AIDS forever.

The critical question is no longer, “Can we end AIDS?” but “Will we end
AIDS?” Will we garner the political and financial capital to do what
science suggests we can?

For years, we have tried various approaches to behavioral and
non-biomedical prevention, with some success. But, since people
continue, and likely always will, to have unprotected sex and share
injection drug equipment, incidence of new infection rates is not
declining and will never decline unless we stop HIV dead in its tracks.
The best way to do that is to provide ARVs to the bulk of people living
with HIV who need them. Modeling in several countries shows a direct
correlation between increased access to care and decreased rates of new
HIV infections.

There are many barriers to care. Drug prices alone are not keeping
people from pills. In some nations, political unrest, lack of
infrastructure and/or a shortage of medical workers mean that even if
governments could afford the pills, the meds still wouldn’t get to the
people. In the United States, impending federal budget cuts, inadequate
state contributions to Medicaid and recent changes in eligibility
requirements for Medicaid, lack of childcare and transportation,
homelessness, substance addiction, mental health issues, comorbidities,
health disparities, misperceptions and language barriers also present
impediments to care.

And of course, fear of stigma, discrimination, homophobia,
criminalization, deportation, physical harm and death undermine HIV care
efforts around the world.

While these challenges are daunting, it pays to overcome them. We need
to greatly expand our testing efforts and do a much better job of
linking people to and retaining them in care. If many more people become
aware of their HIV status earlier, and if they access care and lower
their viral load to an undetectable level, then they not only improve
their own health but they contribute to better public health. Connecting
people to medicines before they inadvertently pass along the virus will
reduce community, and possibly global, viral loads. This is how the
spread of AIDS begins to slow. This is how we cap the well.

Having 27.3 million people with HIV globally (about 1 million of them in
America) remain untreated with existing drugs that can save their lives
and prevent AIDS from spreading is a humanitarian crime of epic
proportion. It’s also no way to stop the AIDS pandemic.

Expanded access to HIV treatment, while a lynchpin in any strategy to
end AIDS, will not, by itself, solve the problem. We also need to
develop and distribute biomedical prevention tools (like PrEP, PEP and
microbicides), scale up male circumcision and continue to distribute
more male and female condoms and clean syringes. The question is one of
relative proportion. Current levels of resources applied in newly
focused and optimally strategic ways to reflect the insight of recent
medical breakthroughs will maximize their impact and hasten doomsday for
AIDS.

We can make major headway by employing our complete arsenal of tools in a
way that ensures we get the biggest bang for our buck. But we can’t get
blood from a stone. If we are to end AIDS, we eventually will need more
money. And it needs to come from fresh sources. No nation has applied
more currency to the fight against AIDS than America. At its peak, the
budget for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was
$48 billion dollars. The United States spends about $19 billion a year
to fight AIDS at home. But that’s about to change as our government now
faces cutting $1.5 trillion from the federal budget. That’s not a
budgeting haircut. That’s a buzz cut.

As budget cuts are made, all discretionary spending and entitlement
programs (which comprise the bulk of domestic and global AIDS funding)
are at risk. The community of people living with HIV/AIDS and our
friends must convince political, economic and global health leaders not
to slash AIDS funding. We are up against those fighting for support for
other diseases, education, the military’s fight against terrorism, and
the dollars needed to keep Social Security secure, to name a few causes.
Our cry must be particularly pointed. If we fail to defend AIDS
spending, tens of millions of people will perish needlessly in the next
decade.

In his opening keynote speech at the International AIDS Conference in
Rome, UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibé called gaps in access to
HIV treatment an affront to humanity that can and must be closed by
innovations in developing, pricing and delivering treatments and
commodities. “History will judge us not by our scientific
breakthroughs,” he said, “but how we apply them.”

Ending AIDS won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and it won’t happen
overnight. But if we develop a smart, sound, strategic plan—one that
uses existing resources better and secures new funding from other
nations—and if we sell it all the way up the political line to the
president himself and across both sides of the Congressional aisle, it
can be done.

This Congress and this president have the chance to kill one of the
world’s worst killers and in the process save tens of millions of people
and billions of dollars. If we rapidly increase access to care, and if
infection rates and deaths decline, then the resources needed to fight
global AIDS could shrink in as few as five years. And, significantly
expanding access to care will make the pharmaceutical companies who make
the drugs even richer. I know, I know. But the answer to bankrolling
the end of AIDS is not as simple as dropping drug prices. The prices set
by for-profit companies are only likely to go down if the volume of
drugs sold goes up. And for that to happen, we need to find more
guaranteed payers. This is why the rest of the world needs to help come
up with the cash to expand access to care for people with HIV.

We have a rare opportunity to rewrite the ending of one of the world’s
worst tragedies. We didn’t give up when we didn’t have the answers for
what can end AIDS—we certainly shouldn’t now that we do.

The bottom line? If the HIV community can encourage the world to up the
antes of international financial and political will, if global advocacy
efforts are bolstered and expanded, if we correctly position the
arguments for why the world should spend the money to stop AIDS, if we
put AIDS back in the spotlight and take it out of its silo, if we
utilize existing health care and faith-based infrastructure to deliver
care, if we make health care a human right that is equally offered to
all, if we protect the human rights of people with HIV, if we put our
money where we know it works best, and if these things result in more
people getting educated, protected, tested, treated and linked to care,
HIV’s days could be clearly numbered.

With that in mind, POZ outlines seven key areas where we need to
focus global efforts if we are to end AIDS, and we suggest specific
tactics within each of those areas.

(Note: The POZ team reviews all comments before they are posted. Please do not include either ":" or "@" in your comment. The opinions expressed by people providing comments are theirs alone. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Smart + Strong, which is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by people providing comments.)

Greg, Melbourne Australia, 2011-10-30 00:09:51
I am staggered to think that a government funding cut is threatening the lives and opportunity that any person can provide to there nation. Rather than a funding demographic, why doesn't the government provide Pharmaceutical company a company tax break and supply the HIV medication at home , so in the US only, this is a win for all involved, or common sense as my grand dad used to say

Rob Careman, Nijmegen, 2011-10-28 08:56:16
Who wants a cure for AIDS, its not that hard to get enouf funding worldwide. There are plenty of us together to start saving money to end HIV and AIDS. If we all pitch in a dollar/euro a week we could work with plenty of money to build our reseach center. Showing this to other goverments and world leaders we do not only change the outcome of HIV/AIDS but healtcare world wide. Because we would be the first to prove, that together we are strong enouf to find a cure.

Rob Careman, Nijmegen, 2011-10-28 08:55:22
Who wants a cure for AIDS, its not that hard to get enouf funding worldwide. There are plenty of us together to start saving money to end HIV and AIDS. If we all pitch in a dollar/euro a week we could work with plenty of money to build our reseach center. Showing this to other goverments and world leaders we do not only change the outcome of HIV/AIDS but healtcare world wide. Because we would be the first to prove, that together we are strong enouf to find a cure.

Rain, louisville, 2011-10-26 12:39:06
I have to disagree with Stef. The Aids Ribbon is Dead, no one ever uses it like before. I think now. Showing your Face and taking a stand to show others that , yes we are Poz and stand strong.Trash the old Logo and people need to start showing themselves. want to know more go to The Face of HIV/AIDS on facebook. thanks- Rain

Stef, New York, 2011-10-24 16:03:03
This is great news, and a hopeful article, but I need to say that seeing the hard copy magazine I am disappointed in the cover image you chose to run. Putting a huge "X" through the red ribbon gives the wrong impression. For something that stands for AIDS awareness, support, and solidarity, I was immediately taken aback seeing an X over it. The inside image of an X over a medicine bottle or the image you ran online of the virus would have been much more appropriate cover images.

alex, Merida, 2011-10-23 21:28:40
Hi
we could do something...we have to organize and give money to the researchers in order to catalyze the new promising therapies..
wach the work of abzyme form Professor Sudhir and the work of prof Loyter with the mix.
They are the only one who have succeded in controling and erradicatins HIV but they need dollars and the big pharma...we are the only interested..we do not have much time.

kaakaa, lusaka, 2011-10-23 17:16:29
it seems when there is war funds are not a problem to kill humans but when it comes to serving lives then funds are a problem what is this world coming to? Please God help us

Paul, Cedar Falls, 2011-10-22 06:37:05
Bad idea publishing this. Some Idiot like Rush Limbaugh will say there is no need for funding anymore and the Morons in Tea Party will agree.

james brooks, Ft Lauderdale, 2011-10-18 17:03:35
Rather than asking for the blessing of a hypocritical money machine called "the church", why don't we educate people about its atrocities?

ksustudent, kennesaw, 2011-10-16 14:27:16
Just a suggestion. Spend more money on perfecting bone marrow transplantation and make it more accessible and affordable. It worked for the German and I think they call that a cure.

Brad, Washington, 2011-10-14 12:29:09
I agree with all your points, but think you are missing one huge one, AIDS, Inc. This has become such big business so deeply entrenched that they cannot adapt. Take, for example, your point on high-risk. You can't go to a meeting without more perpetuation of the stigma. You also neglect another related factor. Testing. Self-testing is a viable and desired option, but it is a policy change, not about money. We have to think more creatively. Too much emphasis on politics and funding here

mollyann, ellenton, 2011-10-02 07:21:17
Wow this is such an awesome article. im a 31 yr white female hiv poz by a knowing infector. this article is giving me hope and making me feel less of a dying breed ! xoxo thank you POZ!!

Positive mom, , 2011-09-30 11:05:40
Reagan, I look forward to your articles every month you are so positive (no pun intended;)) and give so much hope. Your book got me through my initial diagnosis, and your articles get me through my days. Keep fighting the good fight, and so will I. Thank you for all that you do.

Steve, Las Vegas, 2011-09-26 16:20:00
Hoping that number 7 The Cure came last because it is the MOST urgent and important goal, not the least. Why oh why are people here so shelled off against the cure? newsflash, the cure is here now, a man has been cured, countless breakthrough's towards a strategy for the cure being administered have been made within the last 6 months. What will it take to wake everyone here up? Thanks to all at Poz who ARE doing their part

Betsy Yung, Burbank, CA, 2011-09-26 12:17:25
I can't help but wonder if a shift in thinking might ultimately occur if all HIV positive people would decide to come out of the shadows and disclose... particularly those who are public figures. I know it's just a wild dream... if only we could just feel normalized and not stigmatized... if everyone would test and get treated.
I imagine that with all the weapons we currently have... AIDS could die with my generation. Sadly, a cure for me, in my lifetime, is unlikely.